Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

386V. I. LENINthe liberals, he says, in reference to the boycott at thebeginning of 1906, that “for a time the Social-Democratsremained outside the political line of battle”. From a purelytheoretical standpoint such a presentation of the questionof the boycott in 1906 is an incredible simplification andvulgarisation of a very complex problem. What was thereal “line of battle” during the second quarter of 1906—wasit parliamentary or extra-parliamentary? Look at the statistics:the number of persons involved in “economic” strikesrose from 73,000 to 222,000, the number of those involvedin political strikes rose from 196,000 to 257,000. The numberof uyezds affected by the peasant movement rose from36.9 per cent to 49.2 per cent of the total. It is known thatmutinies in the armed forces also increased greatly and becamemore frequent during the second quarter of 1906 comparedwith the first. It is known further that the First Dumawas the most revolutionary parliament in the world (at thebeginning of the twentieth century), yet at the same time itwas the most impotent; not a single one of its decisions wasput into effect.Such are the objective facts. In the estimation of the liberalsand Martov, these facts show that the Duma was the real“line of battle”, whereas uprisings, political strikes and theunrest among the peasants and soldiers were the inconsequentialaffair of “revolutionary romanticists”. And the deepthinkingTrotsky is of the opinion that the factional differencesthat arose on this ground represented an “intellectualist”“struggle for influence over an immature proletariat”.In our opinion the objective data prove that in the springof 1906 there was such a serious upsurge of a real revolutionarymass struggle that the Social-Democratic Party wasobliged to regard precisely that struggle as the principalstruggle and exert every effort to support and develop it.In our opinion the specific political situation at that period—when the tsarist government obtained from Europe a twothousand million loan on the security, as it were, of the convocationof the Duma, and when the tsarist governmentwas hastily promulgating laws against the boycott of theDuma—fully justified the attempt made by the proletariatto wrest the convocation of the first parliament in Russiaout of the hands of the tsar. In our opinion it was not the